After being hit by small arms fire in Vietnam, the helicopter — he remembers it as a Huey — on which Army Specialist E-4 Troy Tyndall was a passenger, rapidly lost oil and fuel and there was no choice but to land, said Tyndall. Neither was there much thought given to fighting, as the five were greatly outnumbered.

“It looked like an army that surrounded us when we landed,” said Tyndall, whose Army job was a cook. “There was no thought of fighting back. … They didn’t seem to want to kill us, just capture us.” The Americans were taken to a POW compound where there were already some 25 Americans held in a small, fenced-in area, with only a small lean-to in one corner to shield prisoners from the weather.

There were three officers as prisoners in the camp, said Tyndall, a major and two captains. “I think it was sort of a temporary POW compound,” said Tyndall, with the enemy probably planning to move the prisoners to a more permanent camp.

Tyndall said he was cruelly interrogated, including having “most of my toenails and fingernails pulled out by bamboo sticks.” He resolved to try to escape but, he said, no one wanted to join him in fleeing.

“They were scared and I think they thought that if several tried they would kill everybody. But I told the major, whose name was Williams, that that ‘Dude’ (a guard inside the fence) was going to go to sleep sometime and, when he does, ‘I’m going.’”

On the fourth night as a POW, about midnight, Tyndall found the guard asleep and made his move. The sleeping guard had carelessly left his bayoneted rifle leaning on the fence. Tyndall sneaked over, grabbed the weapon, and bayoneted the guard. “It was him or me,” said Tyndall. He removed the guard’s keys from him, opened the gate and “went,” eluding other guards around the camp. Nobody went with him.

“I crawled for three days and three nights,” said Tyndall. “I hid in the daytime and moved at night. On the third day I walked in the daytime, because I thought that by that time I was in friendly territory.”

Asked how he knew he was going in the direction of friendly troops, Tyndall explained, “On the second day after I escaped, I knew I was headed in the direction of the cross at Camp Patterson. I could see it.… No, I couldn’t see that far with the naked eye, but in my mind I could see it, and I went toward that. It proves, I think, the truth of the Scripture, ‘The way of the cross leads home.’”

Today, Tyndall says he doesn’t know what happened to the other POWs he left behind.

(Estimates as to the number of Americans still missing and unaccounted for in the Vietnam War range from 2,000 and more, including in North and South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the territorial waters of China. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the U.S. government assumes that some missing Americans may still be alive. As a matter of policy, the US Government does not rule out the possibility that American POWs could still be held.)

Tyndall says he didn’t get the reception he expected when he rejoined his company at Camp Patterson. “They called me AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and said I had just walked away,” said Tyndall. “They didn’t believe me.”

That accusation was made, he said, despite the fact that his fellow soldiers had seen him board the helicopter to be transferred to the 669th.

“They wanted to court martial me and they had a hearing. What stopped it was when the chaplain got there and told them, ‘I know this man is telling the truth. I can tell you this man has not lied to this company and I will not stand for a court martial.” No trial was held and Tyndall was honorably discharged more than a year and a half later.

Mystra says she didn’t know her husband had been captured until he was back in the U.S. This might be explained because of the slowness of records and the fact that Tyndall was back with his unit so soon after his capture.

When he returned from Vietnam, Tyndall served until his discharge with the Sixth Army’s Third Cavalry Regiment at Fort Lewis. Mystra joined him there and they both say they enjoyed their time there.

“It was beautiful there,” Mystra said. Sometimes, she said, she wishes she and her husband had settled there.

“We would go on the mountain and play in the snow,” remembers her husband.

Back home as a civilian, Tyndall went into the ministry, did construction work, drove trucks and whatever it took to make a living. He regularly brings his messages to nursing home, revivals, prisons and hospitals.

L.E. Brown Jr. can be reached at 910-592-8137, ext. 20, or email sicity@intrstar.net.